Gabriel is a stranger in a small Breton town. Nobody knows where he came from or why he's here. Yet his small acts of kindness quickly earn him acceptance from the locals. His new friends grow fond of Gabriel, who seems as benign as the toy panda he wins at the funfair. But unlike Gabriel, the fluffy toy is not haunted by his past...
Highly original French noir in the tradition of Georges Simenon.
'This often bleak, often funny and never predictable narrative is written in a precise style; Garnier chooses to decorate his text with philosophical musings rather than description. He does, however, combine a sense of the surreal with a ruthless wit, and this lightens the mood as he condemns his characters to the kind of miserable existence you might find in a Cormac McCarthy novel' Observer
'The Panda Theory is a short, tightly plotted novel that keeps you guessing right to the end. Is Gabriel, the man we see arriving in a Breton town one Sunday evening, a hero or a villain? Is his reserve a sign of modesty or of malevolence? The novel has a dryness and a keen, often sharp wit combined with a sense of life's banalities, that I really enjoyed' New Books Magazine
'The combination of sudden violence, surreal touches and bone-dry humour have led to Garnier's work being compared with the films of Tarantino and the Coen brothers' Sunday Times
'Action-packed and full of gallows humour' Telegraph
‘Grimly humorous and tremendously dark ... Superb’ Figaro Littéraire
'Wonderfully warm, sad, humorous (and brilliantly translated)' Bookgroup.info
'For those who like their stories situated at the borderline between thriller and something else' Crime Fiction Lover
